tdog

N/A

Ok, so this post is half way between the bonfire and legit skydiving.... In the quest to land a super small canopy and a wing suit, now the TV has shown us it is POSSIBLE to land a RAFT! On Mythbusters, they take "buster" the crash test dummy out for some helicopter "jumps"... On the round life raft he falls out twice and goes in at terminal (or near terminal) - and you get to see exactly what a body looks like as it goes in with the high speed camera, and what is left of it after. Good wakeup call to respect the sport if you ever find yourself getting a little lazy... Thank god I have not seen this first hand with a real human, and I hope I never have to. They, on the third jump, suspend him under the raft and he actually does pretty good using the raft as a canopy... Broken bones, but would have lived... On the rectangular DC10 slide/raft, he actually lands without a single broken bone and the G Force sensors show he would have lived quite easily... They say on the show that the raft would never be able to exit a plane, so the myth is "busted". I sent an e-mail to the host, Adam, linking a picture of the SIM cover (raft dive) and the video of raft dives from SkydivingMovies.com. He actually responded to me that "but you would not want to land that, would ya?" I think he has a point, the raft loading on the SIM cover is just way to high. It is like 20 to 1, whereas buster landed a raft loaded 1 to 1 like a good respectable student. The show is on skydiving movies: http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=2554

If your current gear is safe (I see Javelin and Triathaon in your profile) - I would wait another hundred jumps... What is your canopy downsize progression? I knew I wanted to stay at 1.3 for a while once I got there, so my container handles tightly my 1.15 main I have now (and have had since jump 60, which at high altitude I admit was breaking the recommendations of the "books" but not the recommendations of my instructors who knew my previous experience.) and will go down to 1.3 safely... That should answer your "when to buy" questions. But that is just me.

http://genbiol.cbs.umn.edu/alicense/ used to work. Right now it looks like it is down, at least for me, but it was how I got thru the A test.... (I think my instructor was impressed - after a few questions he said, "is there any part you did not memorize?", and we moved onto theory that is not in the SIM, the "what if you..." type questions... Became a 45 minute educational session much more worth while than I expected...

I got great deals in December closing out the 2004 inventory... But - $200-300 savings is how many rental gear jumps???? What are you using now?

I am surprised you say that... Ok sure, I agree, following someone to high density development or trees would not be a good thing, but why not if they are over open areas where you always know where *you* can land? After doing some balloon jumps, I guess I have the confidence to land someplace I have never, ever, ever have been before, like on a dirt cul-de-sac in a neighborhood under construction ... To me, landing off is not a big deal, and I feel I am safer having that confidence in case I have to land off... I would 100% have the confidence to follow an injured friend to the nearest safe place to land where they are landing...

Not saying it is right or wrong... But I looked at your profile and found the size of your main and reserve are about the same and not that highly loaded... So I am just wondering why you think this? I have some ideas, but I rather hear yours before I prompt you to see if I guessed right...

I thought about this scenario this morning... At first I thought, "Ride the unconscious person down to the second half of the skydive and pull there - so they have a greater chance of landing near the DZ where medical treatment is easier to direct than way off where it might be harder to find the person... Also, it would cut time from the critical minutes... But then I changed my mind... Depending on the injury, the unconscious person has a good chance of waking up after a few minutes (and if they don't the odds are high they won't ever) so a longer canopy ride could help the ones that are gonna live... So, I changed my mind... I would deploy them the second I could then deploy myself. I now jump with a cell phone always, so I would call manifest and tell them to manage the situation including calling 911 and getting the chase car going... Then I would land as near to my friend as possible where I could land safe... But, that is just me... Thanks for posting this thread... Now I have a plan (which might change once the more experienced guys say their bits)

Put into your dive flow "smile" as the first thing once stable... Like ready - set - go - smile - circle of awareness... You can't be nervous and tense when smiling. If you are a "real hard case", you might need to subsidize the smile with a laugh or two.

Are you saying if you don't pack you have to pay $10, or if you do pack you get paid $10.

Your question is not stupid... However, do you know how many times people died because the gear 100% malfunctioned and they did not "participate" in causing that malfunction? Not as often as you would think. Most of the time human error causes the malfunction (two out from going low and getting a AAD fire, pulling wrong handles or no handles, etc)... You actually made me look at the fatality reports on this website and look at the 25 deaths linked to "malfunctions." Many really are "human errors"... I don't see many where a third canopy would have helped...

That means something went right... Now, how much of it did you do, and how much was dumb luck???? I bet most of it you did (arching/flying your body), which means you have some of the skills instructors look for in future jumps (recover from instability). Congratulations.

Once you get past the beginning stuff, if you get a coach for relative work team skydiving, they probably will talk a lot about visualizations... Meaning, practice doing something in your mind, and your mind will not know the difference... And, I did not know it at the time, but I was doing it during AFF... I even one day during my lunch break went to the bathroom at the fast food place and practiced in the mirror. It made AFF real easy because I had already "done the dive" so many times on the ground. Oh, and stretching helps too...

Some of my best openings came from trash packs... Not that I would recommend not being very careful. But I realized soon that it was not as big of a deal as I made it... An AFF student and friend of mine last weekend (who is almost done with AFF) showed interest in packing. I let him pack my rig step by step with me watching and telling him what to do... I jumped it. He was so worried, but I told him it would open fine. It did... Actually, it was the best opening of the day. I asked him if he would mind always packing for me?? Anyway, the point is, relax and have fun packing and you will learn tricks... Also, watch the "pros" do it. They often have tricks too.

I am no expert... But I dislike when people exiting before or after me are MORE concerned with my deployment altitude than horizontal separation... At my DZ, it seems to be the newer skydivers who ask that question. The more advanced ones are asking how fast jump run is, what the winds aloft are doing, etc to insure horizontal separation... When my pull happens can be changed by many things. Do I have to track longer than my comfort zone because I found someone near me... Is there a camera guy pulling high and center in my group? Do I have a malfunction that dumps me at 10,000K or one that requires a reserve ride??? In my short jumping career I have seen two close calls personally with jumpers from other groups. 1) I was in a 4way team training jump. The likelihood of us backsliding all over the sky was much less than the solo sit who followed us out... I tracked away from the formation, 45 degrees to jump run. I dumped and found the sit flyer 50 feet in front of me sniveling many times closer to me than my teammates... Upon landing, I walked up to her and she apologized profusely and was scared shit-less as she saw me in freefall... I talked in a great deal with her and she identified everything she did to put us in the situation including backsliding into our group and not leaving separation in the door... I learned it is real hard to see a sitflier above you when you are tracking... 2) Again - a 4way training jump. I break off at my normal altitude and track. I see the 4 way team that went out before us (1000 jumps each) flying their canopies right under us on jump run... When I pulled a canopy was directly below me with 1000' of vertical separation. We were completely a-ok because my main worked... However, if I would have had a mal, they would have had a front row seat. I think our separation was good until they opted to fly their super fast high WL canopies up the jump run. Actually, the separation was "so good" that they had time to fly under our group, something that would not have happened if we were closer. Lesson learned on that one... The second my canopy is overhead and sniveling I am looking for my teammates and turning off jump run, especially if I am heading "up" jump run and do not see the next group's canopies... So all this babble mumbo jumbo is to say, if you do your job right, in my opinion, on maintaining horizontal separation, you won't need vertical separation... AND - vertical separation is not guaranteed with the dynamics of skydiving.

The few Javelins I jumped always were painful for me too... But I always thought it was a sizing thing being "rental" rigs. Have you had someone look at your rig on ya, since you say it is used, to see what might be causing it???

As phree said, turns near the ground can be deadly... But there are ways to turn that are more safe... Ask your instructors if you have not already learned some about "Flat turns". What I hear.... You are "over the line" on landing... Imagine a threshold of 1 being almost asleep while watching TV... And 10 being the feeling after you were in a car accident where your brain is doing "flight or fight." In our 4-way RW team, we are always looking at our "arousal level." I fly best at a 6. At 4, I am lazy and not "in the game". At 6, I am perfect. At 8 I have "information overload" and don't remember what I did. At 10, I don't think I could land at all safely. Now that I have thrown that scale out there, do you feel you were near 1, 5 or 10 upon your landing??? If you were real high, then you need to work on your comfort level with your instructors... They will have great ideas to calm and ready your mind... While I agree 100% with Phree that you need to work on this soon, the last thing you need going thru your mind on landing is death statistics as, if it was me, it would make me "over the line." And, not turning, using a safe method, also kills skydivers as they hit/land where they shouldn't.... Fear of turns can be bad too. So, work with your instructors to build confidence under the canopy... With confidence comes great things.

Be good and hydrated. Also bring some bottled water for after the jump, you will be thirsty... Adrenaline makes you cotton-mouthed, but I just find being outside and taking in that much fun, sun and wind makes me real thirsty.

I vote your second option The only advantage I see to a smaller canopy is that you MAY be able to "go faster" away from it or "go faster" thru it (assuming you make it thru it)...

I just wish the new threads were color coded... Often I open the incidents and find it is "just" a broken bone... Other times it is death. I hate not knowing for those few seconds. Then I hate worse when the thread subject line does not accurately summarize the situation and a few more seconds pass as you dig deeper. Ya, I am with you to. I hate seeing "new" things there. But, I don't know which one I hate worse... "Hook turn into the ground like many before him" or the "freak accident likely not repeatable."

Is this world so politically correct that this is a term used in a document: or how about suicide turned PC:

Based upon the fact UntamedDOG is in this thread - me thinks this was a inside joke going back to this thread:http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1678377#1678377

I was just wondering where this SUMMER went... A DJ said on the radio she was looking forward to the leaves falling from the trees and watching football on the tube with a fire in the fireplace... Now, if you want to think bigger and talk about years, well then, please do... But I am just wondering where the months went.

Congratulations. You are not the only one... You can look at my jump numbers and see I am a total novice too. The only thing that saves me from being a total clutz in the sky is the 4 hours of tunnel time and 110 4way training jumps... But I never cease to amaze myself on how I can screw up a perfectly good jump. I have jumped with 3 people as their "first A Jump." You would think I want their free beer, however I think it is so fun to see them try something that is not a coach dive. And... Because it is fun to try to keep up with them as they backslide away. Seriously, 3 out of 3 newly minted skydivers backslid away from me, I figured out the trend and started preparing for it... Now I tell my friends who are newly minted, don't let go of me until they feel no pressure on their grips. Instead of me telling them to legs out in the sky like a coach would, I let them "play with it" until they find neutral. They usually have my hands in a two-way... I tell them that what I want to see is them slowly let go and have a small airgap between their hands and my wrists. If they can't maintain the airgap then they are pulling against me... The last person I tried this trick with spent 3/4 of the dive slowly letting go then grabbing back as he started to backslide, but once he got it, we stayed perfectly relative and he smiled as he figured out he did it on his own. I just thought maybe it was a DZ specific thing, but what I hear, a lot of skydivers backslide at first...

Take a paragliding or ground launching class - or - learn about rotors and where to fly around mountains... Get on the wrong side of a mountain, and you will hate life or not have life depending on how bad the wind is... Specifically, if you are landing near the top, stay on the side the wind is coming up... Don't fly directly over the top, and the top on the "back side" is deadly. If you are flying near the mountain, look at the direction of wind both at the top and bottom and make sure they are going the same way - you could be in a huge rotor and not even know it... If you are landing in a huge valley at the bottom of mountains, well, you probably have less to worry about... Seriously, some of the stuff I experienced under a paraglider made me respect that flying near a mountain is not at all like landing at a DZ.